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Iran's radical Revolutionary Guards didn't waste any time. Just days after the 'moderates' were thought to have made gains in the election, the real rulers of Iran launched more ballistic missiles. Those menacing missiles were painted in Hebrew with the words 'Israel must be wiped out!' Clearly this demonstration had the green light from Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The point is that ballistic missiles have one purpose - to deliver a nuclear warhead. In this case, they had a range of 2,000 kilometers (1240 miles), and they can most definitely target Israel. To their credit, the Revolutionary Guards do not want anyone to get the wrong impression that the moderates are on the ascendancy in Tehran.

Talk about stacking the deck... all the 'moderate' candidates who won in the recent election were first evaluated by the all-powerful Guardian Council of ayatollahs. These fanatical Shiite clerics hold the real power in Iran. Just look at the figures - only 20% of the candidates were allowed to run for the Assembly of Experts, an upper House as it were. As for the Majlis, Iran's parliament, only 7,000 of 12,000 candidates got the ayatollahs' stamp of approval. Would you believe it? Even Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Revolution in 1979, was turned down because he was deemed not loyal enough! In other words, the Iranian politicians who were elected were all hand picked and judged to be loyal to the regime. So all the hoopla about a great victory by President Hassan Rouhani should be taken with more than a few grains of salt. Keep in mind that the Guardian Council of ayatollahs, which is in cahoots with the Revolutionary Guards, will still be calling the shots in Tehran when it comes to terror abroad and nuclear policy at home.

Why do Hamas tunnels keep caving in? Is it only due to heavy rain and work accidents, or has Israel solved the problem of those Hamas tunnels being excavated under the border from inside Gaza? More of those tunnels have mysteriously caved-in recently - five in the past three weeks. According to Hamas, twelve of its members have been killed under the rubble. (Yes, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has admitted publicly that his men are tunneling night and day with the aim of launching terror attacks against civilians and IDF soldiers just over the border).

The symbolism was stark. Just days before Washington was due to lift billions of dollars of sanctions on Tehran, the Iranians humiliated ten American sailors who were forced to their knees with their hands behind their heads in submission. The photos from the Persian Gulf were flashed around the world showing who is boss in the Persian Gulf. Just hours later, U.S. President Barack Obama ignored the ignominious incident in his last speech to the nation. On the contrary, he lauds the nuclear deal with Iran. And his Secretary of State, John Kerry, even thanks his Iranian counter-part, Javad Zarif, for the subsequent release of the wayward sailors.

The U.S. spies on Israel - so what else is new? If U.S. President Obama spied on German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande, Prime Minister Netanyahu should be proud to be included in such an august group. Besides, didn't Israel and the U.S. team up to spy on Iran's nuclear program and unleash the Stuxnet virus that derailed it in 2011? With advanced cybernetics and hi-tech, it's only natural that nations, having the capability, will employ it to protect and advance their national interests.

When Barack Obama and Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin, lit Chanukah candles in the Oval Office, they also cast some light on the truth about the U.S. -Israeli relationship. In the past, much was made about the 'bad blood' between Obama and Netanyahu - Barack Hussein Obama was a closet anti-Semite, although most of his closest friends and advisers were Jewish. On the other hand, a close aide to Obama even accused Bibi of coming close to using the N-word! The Obama-Rivlin meeting has gutted these assumptions. At the same time, it has revealed some underling truths about the Obama-Netanyahu feud over the last nearly seven years. Obama and Bibi simply had different perceptions of what policies they wanted to follow after identifying what their voters would support. Naturally, they were democratically elected.

While over 190 world leaders gathered for the global warning conference in Paris, the planet was boiling over in more ways than one. The gathering in Paris, the city whose lights were dimmed by the Daesh atrocity, has been followed by San Bernardino. No, there is still no proof that Syed Farook acted on Daesh orders, but after the Paris attacks Daesh warned that 'Washington' would be next on its hit list. Bear this in mind: the late Dov Yinon, an eminent Israeli expert on Arab affairs, said that whenever some Muslims are exhilarated by a successful terror attack, they dream about also carrying out such acts. This could very well be what happened with Syed Farook, and the FBI is now checking back on his possible 'radical' connections. In the meantime, Daesh has praised the San Bernardino attack, some calling the killers 'Lions who have made us proud!'

The furious confrontation now raging between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recepp Erdogan has raised this nightmare in Jerusalem. A senior Israeli Air Force officer has said he does not know what caused the Turkish jet to shoot down the Russian aircraft along Turkish-Syrian border, but indicated that chances are slim this could happen between Israeli and Russian jets. Israel and Russia have been operating an online communication network to prevent such an incident. At the end of a major Israeli Air Force exercise that has been conducted over northern Israel, the IAF officer said:

"We refrain from flying close to one another in order to prevent the pilots from having any question marks about the other's intentions. The intention is not to shoot down any Russian aircraft. Russia is not the enemy. We try to prevent any friction with the Russian aircraft, and their pilots refrain from any friction with us."

This is the propaganda being disseminated in the media, sponsored by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and sometimes also by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank. In other words, the ISIS leaders’ idea of conquering Rome is actually shared by all the Islamic Jihad organizations. Hamas actually said the same things long before ISIS. In this sense, there is no difference between the global jihad perpetrating mass murder in Paris and the global jihad trying to kill Jews in Israel.

The French leader has ordered his sole aircraft carrier to head urgently for Syria to reinforce the French jets that carried out the first coalition air strike against the Daesh oil facilities. Income from the oil funds 50% of its operations in Syria, Iraq, Sinai, and Europe. But the response of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to abort Canada's combat role against Daesh in the Middle East. At a time when the Free World nations should rally to the aid of France, Trudeau has declared: 'Count Canada out!'

ISIL's writing was on the wall, or should have been - but no one was really ready to see it! After the targeted killing of ‘Jihadi John’, Britain had better be on very high alert. ISIL has escalated its murderous campaign beyond the borders of Syria and Iraq. First Russia, and then the West, stepped up their operations in Syria, and ISIL has hit back hard.

First came the blowing up of the Russian airliner over Sinai, then the horrific suicide bombings in the Hezbollah quarter of Beirut, and now the killing spree in Paris. After blowing the Russian airplane to smithereens, ISIL then issued a video threat to Israel:

'Don't think that because we are fighting in Syria and elsewhere that we have forgotten about you... we are coming to get you in Eilat!'

Barack Obama won, Bibi Netanyahu lost - so what happens now? After fighting a rear guard action to the bitter end, the Israeli leader finally threw in the towel. After forging the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. President will apparently be able to depart the White House in another 17 months with his grand strategy intact - no new American military involvement in the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter). The Ayatollahs in Iran have emerged with a win-win victory. They have simply put their nuclear weapons program temporarily in mothballs and will now cash in with a bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Before we get to the numbers, the difficulties and the dilemmas, one must remember that these are people made of flesh and blood. They have become victims. The vast majority, if not all of them, are true refugees. The dilemma is not Europe’s, which ultimately, even with all the difficulties, will take them all in. The problem is the refugees’ own.

It's all over! There was no mistaking President Barack Obama's 'magnanimous in victory' appearance on his live webcast to America's Jewish community leaders. Just a few days go Obama had called 'crazies' those opponents who were still bucking his controversial deal with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What happened? After more Democratic Senators signed on, it ruled out the attempt to kill the deal in Congress. So the President has now declared he is ready to bury the hatchet with Israel’s Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu:

"We're all pro-Israel... the (U.S.) commitment to Israel is sacrosanct, non- partisan and always will be!"

Islamic State now poses a real and present danger to Israel's southern flank of Egyptian controlled Sinai. The IDF has reacted by stepping up its alert along the Sinai border that includes closing Highway 12, which runs along the frontier. In 2011, Jihadists crossed the border in a daring raid that killed eight Israelis. The terrorists have also rocketed Israel's Red Sea port of Eilat. But the ferocity of the IS combined operation against numerous Egyptian military targets signal a sharp escalation and threat, not only to Cairo but also Jerusalem.

Nearly 40 Muslims were murdered last Friday in a mosque in Kuwait. Dozens of Egyptian soldiers were killed on Wednesday. In between, another 103 Muslims were massacred in the city of Kobani in Syria, another 50 in the village of Lego in Somalia and 28 others in Sana'a, Yemen. We don’t know about all terror attacks in real time. In 2013, nearly 18,000 people were murdered in terror attacks, and in 2014 the number crossed 32,000. Almost all of them were Muslims. In addition, there are the victims of the wars in the Muslim world, so the estimates are that 132,000-174,000 Muslims were killed in 2014. And that's before mentioning the millions of refugees whose situation is deteriorating.

Now Gen (ret.) David Petraeus, an eminent American military leader, has joined a chorus of critics who have assessed President Barack Obama's proposed nuclear deal with Iran. They are alarmed by what is emerging. Petraeus, a former CIA Director and Commander in Iraq, concurs with other former top administration officials who warn:

"The agreement will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability. It will not require the dismantling of Iran's nuclear infrastructure."Read More...

Is Israel now in the crosshairs of ISIS? Ansar al-Maqdis, an affiliate of ISIS in Sinai has posted a warning on its web site threatening to carry out a 'mega-terror attack on Eilat in the coming days'. Eilat is Israel's port on the Red Sea, which is also a very popular tourist town. The al-Maqdis terrorists, who are now engaged in a bloody war with the Egyptian Army, have sworn allegiance to ISIS and are obviously taking their orders from Islamic State. Channel 1 TV opened its evening newscast with three reports on the possible threat. A senior IDF commander in Eilat said his forces are always prepared to cope with suicide bombers or attempts to crash through Israel's security fence along the Sinai border. The Israeli Air Force and Navy are also on round the clock standby to meet attacks from sea or the air. In the past, al-Maqdis has launched several rockets at Eilat. Recently Islamic State has included the Sinai Peninsula into its proposed caliphate, naming it as the 'Sinai Province'.

In Independence Day, I received a message on Facebook from a man who lives in Iraq and wanted to congratulate the State of Israel on its independence and thank it for destroying Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981.

"It smacks of a pinch of hypocrisy" - that was the first official Israeli reaction. It was directed at U.S. President Barack Obama, who told the Atlantic Magazine that he would punish Israel diplomatically for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's election rhetoric about 'no two-two state solution on his watch' and how 'Israeli Arab voters were flocking to the polls in buses'. Hanegbi, who chairs the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, noted that Obama ignored Iran's human rights violations such as executing more people than any other state in the world. This also applied to Turkey, which holds the international record for jailing journalists.